SPRING 2017

Making a Difference: Healing the FamilyFocus on Helping Others Continues After Hours for Landmark Bankers

Debra Yarbrough remembers the first time she entered a prison. Her husband had been involved in a spiritual retreat for inmates, and the group wanted people from the outside to come hear what the retreat had meant to them. Soon, she was reflecting on how much the experience had meant to her.

Ever since, Debra and her husband, Craig, have been working with Kairos Prison Ministry, an initiative with ties to California’s infamous San Quentin State Prison. They split their time, with Craig working “inside” and Debra working “outside.”

“Kairos realized that the families were really serving time along with their loved ones, but their needs and challenges were different,” Debra says.

"I remember my first experience, on a Sunday, being escorted in through all of the barbed wire. There was a long line of women and children coming out from their visits, and I wondered what that must be like for them. I've been involved ever since."

That was five years ago, and while she thought she’d just try it one time back then, Debra has become an integral part of a group putting on a family retreat twice each year. She also volunteers on the business side of the ministry.

The objective, she says, is to give the wives of imprisoned men a safe place to come, where they

can feel free to talk about their struggles without fear of being judged.

“A lot of these women haven’t even told their relatives or church members that they have someone incarcerated because they are afraid of being judged,” Debra says. “These retreats are very freeing, to share with others going through the same thing, and help each other get through it. Our ministry is just to remind them that they are loved, that God loves them, and to encourage them to stay connected with each other.”

She says the retreat is a success when the women leave with a newfound sense of freedom and hope—the spirit that they will need to persevere. They confront feelings of isolation, anger, guilt and rejection, and they talk about the importance of forgiving their loved ones and themselves.

“When you hear the women at the end of the retreat talk about how much the experience meant to them, you realize the value of the time spent. They leave with dignity and hope,” she says. “We get their names a lot of times through the inmates, who often have been through the retreats and want their loved ones to experience it. A lot of times the families are hesitant and don’t want to be there, but they get each other at the end, having found common ground in their shared circumstances.”

The retreats are typically geared toward 25 women at a time, with two spiritual directors guiding the volunteers who have trained for months in preparation. One crew cooks all the meals while table leaders sit with the ladies and have structured discussions from Friday night to Sunday afternoon.

The warden at the West Tennessee State Penitentiary tells the Kairos team that he’s seen the effects, inside and out, with even the most hardened criminals being touched by their work. Some of the inmates have been in prison for years and have never spoken to others, or could be rival gang members. The experience breaks down those barriers inside the walls, and it does the same thing with the families on the outside.

“It’s a huge step for people to come to something like this, and we often see people at their absolute lowest. They have the courage to come seeking help, and the results are incredible,” Debra says. “So many people come back and end up volunteering themselves – a lot of the women I serve with are former participants who were shown so much love at their own time of need, and they want to do the same for others.

"They got a glimpse of unconditional love, God's love in the flesh. A lot of people have never experienced it, or it's been covered up for so long they had forgotten what it feels like."

The word Kairos is Greek for “God’s Special Time”… an opportunity for inmates and their families to reflect on life choices, consequences, and redemption.

Thanks to people like Debra and Craig Yarbrough, people in need are finding the faith and hope to persevere to the next chapter of their lives, having paid their debt to society.

The Eichel Tower: Gworek Family FindsHockey Frenzy on Social Media

As the Stanley Cup Playoffs consume Music City, one Landmark Bank family is stillmarveling over the success of a social media fan initiative that became bigger than

they could have ever imagined.

Landmark Bank Vice President Elise Gworek’s nine-year-old son C.J., a youthhockey player and rabid Buffalo Sabres fan, and her husband, national sports writer

John Gworek, came up with an idea. In January 2016, C.J.’s favorite player, JackEichel, was on a goal-scoring tear. C.J. came up with the concept of a tower of pucks

for every goal Eichel scored, posted on Twitter…. The Eichel Tower.

Sure enough, fans latched on, the Sabres broadcast team mentioned it on-air, and the Tower took on a life of its own. Fast forward to this season, when the Buffalo

team visited Nashville to play the Predators.

“Two or three weeks before the game, the media team contacted my husband to do a story on the tower while they were in town,” Elise says. “It turned in to a once-in-a-

lifetime opportunity for C.J. – not only did he get to meet Jack Eichel, but Jack scored the winning goal in overtime for the Sabres. It was an incredible couple of days, and

something we’ll never forget.”

Now C.J. and the hockey star are corresponding on Twitter, and the fans are loving every minute of it. In the upcoming offseason, the Gworeks are working to find a way to seize the momentum for the public good. Meanwhile, the National Hockey League

produced a feature story on the Eichel Tower, and the goodwill that one young fan can generate.

"So many great things have already come of this: our son learning social media skills and lessons, my husband being able to interact professionally with his favorite team,

all of us talking about how to turn something like this into an initiative to help others…”

“It’s brought a lot of joy to people, and hopefully we can leverage that to do more –it’s gone through two hockey seasons already,” Elise says. “I don’t think he fully

grasps the magnitude of it, which is okay.”

For the whole story, watch this heartwarming video from NHL.com, and be sure tofollow C.J. at @EichelTower615!

Key Players: John B. WalkerWalker Commercial Properties

As Founder and Managing Member of WalkerCommercial Properties in Memphis, John B.Walker knows where timing, location and theright idea meet to become a winning project.

Starting in the commercial real estatebusiness in 1990, he founded his company in1996 around infill projects that brought sought­after retail tenants to key locations.

The Fay Builders on the corner of Poplar andMendenhall avenues served as a hardwarestore for many years, before it burned; Walkerredeveloped that site to include a Chick­Fil­Aand a Public Storage location, both of whichhave been very successful. On the formerKingsway Christian Church site inGermantown, it was a Walgreens, Chick­Fil­Aand Paragon Shopping Center.

Walker says it’s about maximizing the footprint, for density and yield. He says he is now focusedon developing the newest concept of storage facilities.

"We're now working on Generation 4 vertical storage units in places like BuckheadAtlanta and Louisville," he says. "Storage used to be the thing to put on theperimeter of the city and sort of land bank it until the right opportunity emerged.Now it's on Main Street and can look like a Class A office building ­­ you can create alot of square footage that generates cash flow and doesn't require much parking."

As an example, the Buckhead site is a 10­story,125,000 square foot, all climate­controlled storage facility on less than an acre.

He credits self­storage pioneer Dean Jernigan with the innovative idea of multi­floor storage units, saying that the best investment is in the right partners. That’s what attracted him to Jake Farrell and Buddy Dickey as bankers and leaders.

“Landmark Bank was struggling in the Recession, as most everyone was, and I had worked with Jake and Buddy previously at another bank. As a board member, I believed they had the right combination of skills to help us be successful,” Walker says. “I think it’s fair to say that Landmark’s success has exceeded all of our expectations.”

He says the winning formula is financial acumen, uncommon people skills and the ability to build the right team.

“I really enjoy just seeing how the staff treats customers. Everyone knows each other by name, and it’s such a nice banking environment,” he says. “Couple that with the flexibility to work with clients in a way that larger entities just can’t do, and you see why it works so well, both in west and middle Tennessee.”

Landmark Honored by EducationFoundation for Leadership & SupportIn January 2016, the Education Foundationfor Williamson County announced itsformation with a lead gift from LandmarkCommunity Bank, designed to install afinancial literacy program in the FranklinSpecial School District.

Just over a year later, that program is set tolaunch, and the Bank was recently honoredwith the first­ever "Be the Catalyst" Award forcorporate partnership.

Above: Education Foundation Chair Julian Bibb presents the award to Landmark's Barry Allen,Amy Delk and Buddy Dickey.

For more on the awards and other honorees, click here to read the Tennessean story.

New Additions: Amy Delk Named VP/Private BankerA longtime Middle Tennessee banker hasjoined the team at Landmark CommunityBank. Amy Delk will serve as vice presidentand private banker at Landmark’s East MainStreet branch in Downtown Franklin.

Delk, a native of Columbia, Tenn., earned adegree in social and behavioral sciences fromFreed Hardeman University before startingher career with Nashville Bank of Commercein the late 1990s. Since then, she has workedwith a handful of marquee banks in rolesranging from private banking and commercialand mortgage lending to treasurymanagement, as well as serving as a branchmanager and community executive withFranklin Synergy Bank in Spring Hill.

"I have always been most comfortable working on the personal side of banking, andhaving worked with big regional banks, Landmark's approach to true communitybanking really appealed to me," Delk says. "We customize our products andservices to the customer, not vice versa, and we have that niche ability toaccomodate all of our customers' banking needs quickly and cost­effectively."

For more, see the story here in the Williamson Herald.

Meagan Nichols, Memphis Business Journal

Landmark Community Bank plans to bulldoze a Germantown retail building to make way for additional parking.

The circa 1950s building located at 2245 S. Germantown Road, which measures in at 1,600 square feet according to the Shelby County Assessor of Property’s website, will be demolished.

The building previously housed Checkerberry Shoppe and The Book Depot. Landmark Bank, which has an adjacent branch, at 2241 S. Germantown Road, purchased what is referred to as the Checkerberry building for $200,000 in June 2016.

“The sweet lady who owned the Checkerberry — Ms. Nancy Grider — indicated to us that she was looking at her retirement and thought she should plan toward that by the end of 2016,” said Dianne Fry, senior vice president of private banking at Landmark Bank's 2241 S. Germantown Road location. “We purchased her building, and [Grider] continued to operate, without rent, until she felt she was ready to close. She started that process in November and completed everything to close by the end of February.”

Click here for the rest of the MBJ story.

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Germantown: Landmark Adding Additional Parking forBranch and Community Use